Lollapalooza Day 3 Recap

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Come Sunday morning you have to ask yourself, “Can these flip flops take any more?”

Completely wiped out from an action-packed Saturday, but still buzzing from the unbelievable set from [lastfm]Phoenix[/lastfm] to close out the night—of course, the answer is “YES.”

The day started with a little rain but the promise of clear skies in the afternoon. Even so, the XRT ponchos I was stocked with made me the most popular kid on the block that morning—for about 2 hours. I was backstage for the better part of the weekend, collecting interviews, video and photos. You can see all of this coverage in our Live at Lollapalooza section.

Once our backstage coverage rapped up, I was determined to catch both headliners of the night.

[photogallerylink id=32226 align=left] [lastfm]Soundgarden[/lastfm] hit the south stage at 8pm sharp, just about the time mosquitoes started hitting us in the field. Their set opened strong, with classic hit after classic hit—including “Spoonman.” which I had never heard live. Soundgarden left me with the feeling, “Yeah, they still got it.” I heard the set ended 10 minutes early, though I can’t confirm or deny, because I was already jetting north to watch [lastfm]Arcade Fire [/lastfm]close out the festival.

Arcade Fire took the Budweiser stage and instantly captured the crowd, singing songs from all 3 of their albums. Crowd favorites were “Crown of Love,” “Keep the Car Running,” “The Suburbs,” and “Rococo.”

Win Butler seemed humble and grateful to be playing to a crowd full of people already singing along to songs from an album just released last Tuesday. It seemed the band were having a pivotal rock star moment as they played their anthemic rock songs to a crowd of at least 20,000.

There were some rumblings about [lastfm]David Bowie[/lastfm] making an appearance during the Arcade Fire encore. This didn’t pan out, but if you jonesing for some Bowie, here’s his performance with the band at Radio City Music Hall in ’05.

[photogallerylink id=32000 align=left]If that wasn’t enough for you, [lastfm]Phoenix[/lastfm] also played an aftershow at House of Blues, which we broadcast live last night at Midnight. You’ll be able to hear this performance at some point in the future on 93XRT. Check out video from Thomas Mars backstage at Lolla.